Punjabi: CyberGiani Panjabi Punjabi

The Only Way to Learn Panjabi!
CyberGiani is a MicrosoftWindows based State-of-the-Art interactive multimedia program to learn to Read, Speak and Write the Panjabi Language.
It provides: Fast, Effective, Comprehensive and Basic to Advanced learning experience with extensive use of native speakers' video, graphics, pictures, movies and music.

Comes on 3 CDROMs.

* * * * * ONLY: $75CAD + s&h * * * * *

Introduction

The Language Coverage

Read, Write and Speak

Program Development

System Requirements

The Development Team

INTRODUCTION

CyberGiani is an interactive Panjabi language learning computer program for English speakers using the Gurmukhi script. It utilizes a very simple point and click interface. The program reveals itself very intuitively, logically and is captivating. The program is suitable for absolute beginners as well as advanced Panjabi readers. It provides an en tertaining, enjoyable and rewarding experience through the extensive use of video, graphics, pictures, movies and music. The user interface lends itself a life of its own so that the user should find himself or herself engaged in a mutual dialog rather th an working with merely a machine.

THE LANGUAGE COVERAGE

The coverage of the Panjabi language in this program is quite extensive. The language content has been presented in a very logical and coherent fashion. Though there is certainly a sequence of progression from the phonetics to the grammar of the language, yet depending on a learner's existing level of knowledge of the language, s/he can pick and choose from different parts of the program as s/he pleases. The program material has been carefully grouped so as to be used in more than one way. For example y ou may want to learn about words related to birds, vegetables, nature or philosophy at any stage of your learning -- all is just a mouse click away. Each learner can chart his/her own course as it fits to the individual needs.

The Gurmukhi alphabet (Painti) sounds are introduced with the closest possible phonetic examples available in English, for example, sassa as the letter S in Sun, ghagga as GH in the word diG-Hard or jhijja as DGEH in the word heDGEHog, etc. Similarly, the Gurmukhi vowel signs are intr oduced with examples from English words. The program provides complete sound tables for consonants, vowels, diacritical signs, Bindi, and Tippi combinations. The rest of the language contents are introduced and discussed in a very logical sequence -- fro m two-letter words, three-letter words, general words, words that have half-consonants (h, r, v), commonly used phrases, simple sentences, to fully classified vocabulary and grammar. Advanced Panjabi readers can benefit from comprehensive coverage of the Panjabi grammar. There are over 6500 words, over 2000 sentences and phrases. That's a lot, considering the fact that a n average person has a vocabulary of about 2500 words. (That is a way more than what most of us make use of in our daily lives.)

READ, WRITE and SPEAK

Reading and speaking has been made very entertaining and satisfying. You do not merely have to listen to the computer. You can be active participants in the process. The program provides the facility to learn to speak by record ing your own voice samples and comparing it with that of a master speaker. You can repeat the recording and replaying process as long as you want, until you are happily satisfied. The program also provides the capability to learn to write. Well, there is a right way to write and a wrong way to write. Learning to write has been made very easy for beginners. A user can 'play' master hand-writing at any speed and practice writing with a computer mouse or a drawing pen on the program's Writing Pad.

There are plenty of memory exercises to help you monitor and assess the progress of your reading skills. The program offers you a challenge to show what you have learnt so far.

PROGRAM DEVELOPMENT

The development of this product was a challenge on several fronts -- the multimedia, the language content, the language dialects, etc. It took over two and a half year of hard work and perseverance to develop the product. The program comes on 3 CD-ROMs. The amount of effort that went into the development can be gauged from the fact that the raw data for this program was captured on 21 CD-ROMs that has been meticulously edited onto 3 CD-ROMs for the released prog ram. There are four native speakers who deliver the language content. CyberGiani has been designed and developed by Arjinder Singh Uppal and linguistic research has been done by Harman Singh Chahal and Arjinder himself.

SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS

Mininum Requirements: You need at least a 66MHz 486; Windows 3.1* with 8MB RAM or Windows95 or higher; a super VGA video card & monitor with at least 32K colors; a SoundBlaster or compatible sound card; at least 30MB of hard disk space and a 4x CD-ROM. If learn ing to speak, you will need a microphone for recording.

For Optimal Performance: You should have a Pentium processor with Windows95 or higher and 8x CD-ROM. (A multi-disk changer is recommended)

THE DEVELOPMENT TEAM

DESIGN/DEVELOPMENT/VIDEO/ANIMATION/GRAPHICS/ART:
Arjinder Singh Uppal B.Sc.(Phys&Chem), B.Sc.(Hons)(Math), M.Sc.(Computer Science)

LANGUAGE RESEARCH:
Harman Singh Chahal Giani, B.Sc.(Med), B.Sc.(Computer Science), M.A.(English)
Arjinder Singh Uppal

SPEAKERS:
Mohinder Singh Uppal B.Sc., P.Eng.
Dr. Arvind Kang M.B.B.S., F.R.C.P.(C)
Sukhkiran Kaur Sandhu
Vandanvir Kaur Sandhu

SINGER:
Shiv Kumar Batalvi sung by
Avtar Uppal